If Capitalism is so great, how do you explain this in the most capitalistic country on earth?

Hungry For The Holidays: 20 Facts About Hunger In America That Will Blow Your Mind

By Michael Snyder

November 28, 2012 "Information Clearing House" - All over America there are millions of people that will be missing meals and going hungry this holiday season. Even as much of the country indulges in the yearly ritual of unbridled consumerism that we refer to as “the holiday season”, more families in the United States than ever before will be dealing with not having enough food to eat. Food stamp use is at an all-time high. Demand at food banks is at an all-time high. They keep telling us that we are in an “economic recovery” and yet the middle class continues to shrink and the number of Americans living in poverty just continues to grow. We are witnessing unprecedented hunger in America, and this especially seems tragic during the holidays. Much of the country is partying as if the good times will never stop, but families that are living from one meal to the next are facing a completely different reality. How do you tell your children that there isn’t going to be any food to eat for dinner? How do you explain to them that other families have plenty to eat but you don’t? Sadly, many food banks are overstretched at this point. All over the nation, food pantries have actually had to turn people away because of the overwhelming demand. And more Americans used food stamps to buy their Thanksgiving dinners this year than ever before. This is a problem that is not going away any time soon, and when the next major economic downturn strikes the problem of hunger in America is going to get even worse.

For many Americans, hunger has become a way of life. Families that don’t have enough money are often faced with some absolutely heartbreaking choices. Just check out what one Maine official that works with the Emergency Food Assistance Program recently had to say…

“One in six people in Maine don’t know where their next meal is coming from, or skip a meal so their kids can eat, or have to choose between paying for prescriptions and food, or fuel for your car and food,” Hall said. “What’s amazing is that food is always the first thing to go from your budget. It’s staggering, the choices people have to make.”

Food banks all over the country try their best to do what they can, especially during the holidays, but it is often not enough. In fact, some food banks ran out of turkeys well in advance of Thanksgiving this year…

Three days in advance of Thanksgiving, the Pear Street Cupboard and Café in Framingham, Massachusetts, is out of turkeys. According to organizers, “requests for help are up 400 percent over last year.”

But it isn’t just during the holidays that food banks are having problems keeping up with demand. The truth is that many food banks find themselves out of food and having to turn away hungry families all throughout the year. The following is from a recent Reuters article…

Overall, food pantries and soup kitchens reported a 5 percent spike in demand in 2012, according to the survey. More than half of providers said they were forced to turn away clients, reduce portion sizes, or limit their hours.

In Staten Island, all of the agencies that respond to hunger reported not having enough food to meet demand, while in the Bronx that was true for 80 percent of agencies. In Queens and Brooklyn, more than 60 percent of agencies did not have enough food to meet the needs of the populations they serve.

If you are able, please support your local food bank. The needs are great and they are only going to get greater.

The following are 20 facts about hunger in America that will blow your mind…

1 According to one calculation, the number of Americans on food stamps now exceeds the combined populations of “Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.”

2 In October 2008, 30.8 million Americans were on food stamps. By August 2012 that number had risen to 47.1 million Americans.

3 Right now, one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps and one out of every four American children is on food stamps.

4 It is projected that half of all American children will be on food stamps at least once before they turn 18 years of age.

5 According to new numbers that were just released by the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of Americans living in poverty increased to a new all-time record high of 49.7 million last year.

6 The number of Americans living in poverty has increased by about 6 million over the past four years.

7 Today, about one out of every four workers in the United States brings home wages that are at or below the federal poverty level.

8 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the poverty rate for children living in the United States is about 22 percent.

9 Overall, approximately 57 percent of all children in the United States are living in homes that are either considered to be either “low income” or impoverished.

10 In the United States today, close to 100 million Americans are considered to be either “poor” or “near poor”.

11 One university study estimates that child poverty costs the U.S. economy 500 billion dollars each year.

12 Households that are led by a single mother have a 31.6 percent poverty rate.

13 In 2010, 42 percent of all single mothers in the United States were on food stamps.

14 According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 36.4 percent of all children in Philadelphia are living in poverty, 40.1 percent of all children in Atlanta are living in poverty, 52.6 percent of all children in Cleveland are living in poverty and 53.6 percent of all children in Detroit are living in poverty.

15 Since 2007, the number of children living in poverty in the state of California has increased by 30 percent.

16 Family homelessness in the Washington D.C. region (one of the wealthiest regions in the entire country) has risen 23 percent since the last recession began.

17 There are 314 counties in the United States where at least 30 percent of the children are facing food insecurity.

18 More than 20 million U.S. children rely on school meal programs to keep from going hungry.

19 Right now, more than 100 million Americans are enrolled in at least one welfare program run by the federal government. And that does not even count Social Security or Medicare.

20 According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, approximately 40 percent of all food in America “is routinely thrown away by consumers at home, discarded or unserved at restaurants or left unharvested on farms.”

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This is why we need the Green New Deal. The Green New Deal is a four part program for moving America quickly out of crisis into a secure, sustainable future. Inspired by the New Deal programs that helped us out of the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Green New Deal will provide similar relief and create an economy that makes our communities sustainable, healthy and just.

THE FOUR PILLARS OF THE GREEN NEW DEAL

I - THE ECONOMIC BILL OF RIGHTS

Our country cannot truly move forward until the roots of inequality are pulled up, and the seeds of a new, healthier economy are planted. Thus, the Green New Deal begins with an Economic Bill of Rights that ensures all citizens:

The right to employment through a Full Employment Program that will create 25 million jobs by implementing a nationally funded, but locally controlled direct employment initiative replacing unemployment offices with local employment offices offering public sector jobs which are “stored” in job banks in order to take up any slack in private sector employment.

• Local communities will use a process of broad stakeholder input and democratic decisionmaking to fairly implement these programs.

• Pay-to-play prohibitions will ensure that campaign contributions or lobbying favors do not impact decision-making.

• We will end unemployment in America once and for all by guaranteeing a job at a living wage for every American willing and able to work.

Worker’s rights including the right to a living wage, to a safe workplace, to fair trade, and to organize a union at work without fear of firing or reprisal.

The right to quality health care which will be achieved through a single-payer Medicare-for-All program.

The right to a tuition-free, quality, federally funded, local controlled public education system from pre-school through college. We will also forgive student loan debt from the current era of unaffordable college education.

The right to decent affordable housing, including an immediate halt to all foreclosures and evictions. We will:

• create a federal bank with local branches to take over homes with distressed mortgages and either restructure the mortgages to affordable levels, or if the occupants cannot afford a mortgage, rent homes to the occupants;

• expand rental and home ownership assistance;

• create ample public housing; and,

• offer capital grants to non-profit developers of affordable housing until all people can obtain decent housing at no more than 25% of their income.

The right to accessible and affordable utilities – heat, electricity, phone, internet, and public transportation – through democratically run, publicly owned utilities that operate at cost, not for profit.

The right to fair taxation that’s distributed in proportion to ability to pay. In addition, corporate tax subsidies will be made transparent by detailing them in public budgets where they can be scrutinized, not hidden as tax breaks.

II - A GREEN TRANSITION

The second priority of the Green New Deal is a Green Transition Program that will convert the old, gray economy into a new, sustainable economy that is environmentally sound, economically viable and socially responsible. We will:

Invest in green business by providing grants and low-interest loans to grow green businesses and cooperatives, with an emphasis on small, locally-based companies that keep the wealth created by local labor circulating in the community rather than being drained off to enrich absentee investors.

Prioritize green research by redirecting research funds from fossil fuels and other dead-end industries toward research in wind, solar and geothermal. We will invest in research in sustainable, nontoxic materials, closed-loop cycles that eliminate waste and pollution, as well as organic agriculture, permaculture, and sustainable forestry.

Provide green jobs by enacting the Full Employment Program which will directly provide 16 million jobs in sustainable energy and energy efficiency retrofitting, mass transit and “complete streets” that promote safe bike and pedestrian traffic, regional food systems based on sustainable organic agriculture, and clean manufacturing.

III - REAL FINANCIAL REFORM

The takeover of our economy by big banks and well-connected financiers has destabilized both our democracy and our economy. It’s time to take Wall Street out of the driver’s seat and to free the truly productive segments of working America to make this economy work for all of us. Real Financial Reform will:

Relieve the debt overhang holding back the economy by reducing homeowner and student debt burdens.

Democratize monetary policy to bring about public control of the money supply and credit creation. This means we’ll nationalize the private bank-dominated Federal Reserve Banks and place them under a Monetary Authority within the Treasury Department.

Break up the oversized banks that are “too big to fail.”

End taxpayer-funded bailouts for banks, insurers, and other financial companies. We’ll use the FDIC resolution process for failed banks to reopen them as public banks where possible after failed loans and underlying assets are auctioned off.

Regulate all financial derivatives and require them to be traded on open exchanges.

Support the formation of federal, state, and municipal public-owned banks that function as non-profit utilities.

Under the Green New Deal we will start building a financial system that is open, honest, stable, and serves the real economy rather than the phony economy of high finance.

IV - A FUNCTIONING DEMOCRACY

We won’t get these vital reforms without a fourth and final set of reforms to give us a real, functioning democracy. Just as we are replacing the old economy with a new one, we need a new politics to restore the promise of American democracy. The New Green Deal will:

Revoke corporate personhood by amending our Constitution to make clear that corporations are not persons and money is not speech. Those rights belong to living, breathing human beings - not to business entities controlled by the wealthy.

Protect our right to vote by supporting Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr.’s proposed “Right to Vote Amendment,” to clarify to the Supreme Court that yes, we do have a constitutional right to vote.

Enact the Voter Bill of Rights that will:

• guarantee us a voter-marked paper ballot for all voting;

• require that all votes are counted before election results are released;

• celebrate our democratic aspirations by making Election Day a national holiday;

• bring simplified, safe same-day voter registration to the nation so that no qualified voter is barred from the polls;

• do away with so-called “winner take all” elections in which the “winner” does not have the support of most of the voters, and replace that system with instant runoff voting and proportional representation, systems most advanced countries now use to good effect;

• replace big money control of election campaigns with full public financing and free and equal access to the airwaves;

• guarantee equal access to the ballot and to the debates to all qualified candidates;

• abolish the Electoral College and implement direct election of the President;

• restore the vote to ex-offenders who’ve paid their debt to society; and,

• enact Statehood for the District of Columbia so that those Americans have representation in Congress and full rights to self rule like the rest of us.

Protect local democracy and democratic rights by commissioning a thorough review of federal preemption law and its impact on the practice of local democracy in the United States. This review will put at its center the “democracy question” – that is, what level of government is most open to democratic participation and most suited to protecting democratic rights.

Create a Corporation for Economic Democracy, a new federal corporation (like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting) to provide publicity, training, education, and direct financing for cooperative development and for democratic reforms to make government agencies, private associations, and business enterprises more participatory.

Strengthen media democracy by expanding federal support for locally-owned broadcast media and local print media.

Protect our personal liberty and freedoms by:

• repealing the Patriot Act and those parts of the National Defense Authorization Act that violate our civil liberties;

• prohibiting the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI from conspiring with local police forces to suppress our freedoms of assembly and of speech; and,

• ending the war on immigrants – including the cruel, so-called “secure communities” program.

Rein in the military-industrial complex by

• reducing military spending by 50% and closing U.S. military bases around the world;

• restoring the National Guard as the centerpiece of our system of national defense; and,

• creating a new round of nuclear disarmament initiatives.

Let us not rest until we have pulled our nation back from the brink, and until we have secured the peaceful, just, green future we all deserve.

GR8 Graphic and very nice post 'Ud' !! I used this information myself today on another thread. Very hard hitting info and all backed up with corroborating links embedded in the original link at the ver top of your post. Nice work m8 & once again, I <3 your graphix :-)

Thx shadz. I pulled the graphic off of Wikipedia under the topic of "Propaganda" of all things, in case you're interested. Hat's off to you for turning me on to Information Clearing House. I have been going there more and more lately when it comes to alternative information. They have gr8 articles. Cheers.

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.” - (Edward Bernays, Propaganda)

Edward Bernays was 'the father of modern Public Relations' - indeed he coined the term, I believe. He was Sigmund Freud's nephew and combined his uncles ideas with the then new concepts of 'Social Psychology' and wrote the book, linked to here in its entirity.

Yes shadz. Don't know if you remember or not, but you're the one who turned me on to watching "The Century of the Self", where all of that was detailed. A real eye-opener. I got depressed for awhile after that. Very disturbing that we humans can be so easily influenced and controlled by our base impulses. Will mankind ever learn?

Re. "Century of The Self" [ http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-century-of-the-self/ ], I remember it well and though I had first watched them one at a time as they were broadcast by The BBC, I recall that you watched them at one go, without enough breaks & I still recall your reaction. It is hard viewing and I still recommend breaks. I wonder if you recall :

From the report : "Americans exhibit a general disconnect between their attitudes toward economic inequality and their self-interest and public
policy preferences, suggesting that even given increased awareness of the gap between ideal and actual wealth distributions, Americans may remain unlikely to advocate for policies that would narrow this gap."

Do I now I feel depressed ?! NO !! Onwards and Upwards !!! Because 'Struggle' is what it's all about !!!!

Yeah, those vids really did a number on me for awhile. I recovered though better for it with the knowledge. Onward and Upward is right. Can't deal with reality correctly if you don't know what that reality is.

But a word of warning to anyone reading this. Watch "The Century of the Self" in 1 hour increments with a day or two break in between. All 4 hours all at once hold potential for overwhelming brain damage :-)

Sorry buddy, I remember that now ! I completely concur that we can not "deal with reality correctly if you don't know what that reality is" !! Finally, I echo your last paragraph in its entirety !!! Solidarity :-)

Yeah, shadz. Austerity is the single biggest indicator that monetary and fiscal policy has completely failed, and that governments just don't have a clue what to do but shit on the little guy.

I see nothing hopeful in the future since money = debt, and there is so much debt/money that inflation will continue to devalue all world currencies. I think we are pretty well totally screwed. I have no faith in our so-called leaders to resolve this crisis.

I think we have really begun to say - fuck no - NO MORE - ENOUGH BULLSHIT - Time to get real. Hence OWS and all Occupy Groups - movements. This last year has seen a big change in dialog and awareness. Now we continue pushing forward. People are beginning to stand-up. More each day each week.

Amid the economic downturn in 2007, economist, professor, and Truthout contributor and advisory board member Richard Wolff laid out a vision for a radical reorganization of labor wherein employees had control of their workplaces. From choosing their work hours to coming to consensus about everyday business operations, employees would act together as their own bosses to combat inequality in the workplace.

The Story of Beyond Care

After facing insecure jobs, low wages and toxic unemployment, Susana Peralta and 19 other women turned that radical restructuring of the workplace into a reality. Their cooperative brainchild Beyond Care blossomed in 2008 as a new way to provide quality employment for their community in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

The alternative workplace provides a necessary service of part- and full-time childcare where the women are their own bosses and chose their own hours and wages, a welcomed change from traditional workplaces.

"Not only did we create a space with fairer wages, but we found a way to employ our entire community," Peralta, the Beyond Care cooperative president said.

Peralta and her coworkers are exactly what Wolff and his new organization Democracy at Work, a collaboration with Truthout and several other partners, conceptualized for the future of employment. Democracy at Work was born in 2011 after Wolff's weekly radio show Economic Update, supported by Truthout, became syndicated in ten cities and listeners grew desperate for a solution to the abysmal employment and economic crisis.

"People wanted a solution, so we had to answer this demand," Wolff said. "The answer we came up with is democracy at work that would respond to the criticism we're making about the failures of the system to solve its own problems, to the failure of the old traditional socialism to be a model that attracts people and excites them." The fundamental idea of Democracy at Work is to create a society based on workers' self-directed enterprises. Fully egalitarian in every sense, workers run the business, share the assets and create a workspace that runs in harmony with not only its workers, but the entire community.

Wolff's argument is that workers in control of their own workplaces are much less likely to ship their own jobs overseas, underpay employees or pollute their own communities. As workers' enterprises become fully functioning, they benefit those who participate as workers as well as the customers and communities they serve. But before Beyond Care came into full operation, the women worked every day just to promote the business to get its first clients. Because they had to build up the daycare on an idea alone, with no money, it was completely up to them to gain momentum for the business. They put up flyers all over their neighborhood, trying to spread the word about their cooperative. After four years of word-of-mouth promotion and advertising, the collective got its first client. Now, Beyond Care has more clients than it can handle; the childcare center now has to turn down nearly seven clients each week because of its growing popularity. Parents love that their children are learning Spanish and that Beyond Care is entirely democratically run, Peralta added.

The women are constantly attending trainings and are currently working on expanding their services to meet the needs of children with disabilities. Unlike traditional workplaces, pleasing its customer-base is vital to Beyond Care's survival.

"If you work with an agency, you work to please your boss; when you work for a cooperative, you have more incentive to please the customers because your job depends directly on it," said collective developer Emma Yorra.

But perhaps most importantly, Peralta said, is the job security a collectively run workplace provides. No one worries about not having clients or being fired with nowhere to go. There are always clients and work to be done for the community, she said.

"We all have equal benefits and security now," Peralta said. "It isn't just for those of us who started the co-op; we're interested in something that benefits the entire community."

This "radical reorganization and democratization of enterprise," according to Wolff, gives workers complete control of their own workplaces, allows them to decide their wages and work fair hours, just as Beyond Care has been doing for the past four years. In a democratic workplace, no longer do bosses or agencies dictate how much employees should be paid - solving the issue of struggling workers barely able to pay for basic living expenses.

But job security would be the most beneficial outcome of worker self-directed enterprises, adds Jen Hill, co-founder of Democracy at Work. "When people are secure in their work-life, they have the freedom to participate in politics, home life and have time with their families, which would produce a more educated and creative society where everyone has a voice," Hill said. "Generations would be self-expressed, more equal and more secure. The opposite of what capitalism has done for us: insecurity and inequality."

Red Emma's Story

The freedom and democratic control of a cooperative gave the founding members of Red Emma's bookstore in Baltimore, Maryland, the freedom to expand further than a traditional business. Collectivized at the end of 2004, Red Emma's has flourished into a fully sustainable business, complete with a cafe serving fair-trade coffee, a space for political discussions, a free computer lab and a template for others to begin their own collective.

"We wanted to build an infrastructure that creates the world we want to see and a space that allows us to put our politics into practice," said Kate Khatib, a Red Emma's founding collective member. "Emma's is an experiment, a laboratory to see if these things we talk about in our literature actually work, and if not, why doesn't it work? What can we do instead?"

Owned and operated by 14 collective members and a group of volunteers, Red Emma's grew into a product of its own politics, giving each member a say in every aspect of the operation. But Emma's still has a few of the same obstacles many other independent bookshops across the country have. The collective still has times when it struggles with book sales or building repairs.

And although Emma's is an open collective, it takes six months to become a full member. After three months of volunteering for five hours each week and a series of checkpoints and reviews, the collective must come to a complete consensus before inviting someone to join. Then after three more months of working as a provisional member, they are eligible to become a collective member and officially added to Red Emma's ownership documents.

"Collectives offer a way to change the way we think of work," John Duda, another founding collective member said. "It's a space that changes people's expectations of what labor can look like."

Consensus becomes the basis of each workday. Every member and volunteer knows which lightbulb goes where, how much money was brought in that week and where the cooperative's produce comes from (local, family-owned grocery stores) and is encouraged to participate in each business decision.

Weekly collective meetings are run so every participant has a chance to speak. Each member focuses on a certain aspect of Emma's: public relations, book ordering, volunteers and logistics. Direct democracy developed Emma's into one of Baltimore's destination bookstores and into a worker self-directed enterprise that's able to be replicated by other business ventures.

"It's rewarding to see that it is possible to build something that is sustainable, that has a capacity to reproduce itself as an institution," Duda said. "It opens a space where people learn to live a little differently."

Democracy at Work is spreading this template to make it easier for collectives and cooperatives to sprout in cities where unemployment is deteriorating entire neighborhoods. The organization is developing informational videos to make these methods more accessible, and there are plans to organize a training institution where ideas are manifested into concrete business plans.

"We are developing a movement. We have the basic idea. We have a very enthusiastic audience," Wolff said. "It's growing, but the trick is how to find a way to glue people together, give them enough to do that they feel part of something because that's what they want."

• We will end unemployment in America once and for all by guaranteeing a job at a living wage for every American willing and able to work.
1.
Worker’s rights including the right to a living wage, to a safe workplace, to fair trade, and to organize a union at work without fear of firing or reprisal.

2.
The right to quality health care which will be achieved through a single-payer Medicare-for-All program.

3.
The right to a tuition-free, quality, federally funded, local controlled public education system from pre-school through college. We will also forgive student loan debt from the current era of unaffordable college education.

4.
The right to decent affordable housing, including an immediate halt to all foreclosures and evictions. We will:<<<

HOW DO YOU PROMISE A JOB, IF NONE OF VALUE EXISTS?

MEDICARE IS BANKRUPT. IT COSTS $13000 PER RETIREE NOW. ADDING MILLONS OF PEOPLE TO AN ALREADY BANKRUPT PROGRAM IS INSANE.

This is just a start to your insanity.

Right now the total unfunded liability of the Federal government is $87 trillion. The total value of America, the land, the nuts, the bolts, the corporations, the mountains, the oil underground, the rivers, the coal, the natural gas still locked in the earth is $63 trillion.

Doesnt even take into account what the states owe public employees.

Here is the truth: you need to carve out your own future by yourself as does every single citizen.

1st of all please present you statistics with sources to back them up otherwise they are just numbers you pulled out of your ass and not form some right wing think tank either. 2nd of all you didn't present one reason outside of money why these things should not or can not be done. 3rd of all money is a non-issue we are not going to pay back one cent of that fraudulent libor rigged debt. once someone with balls comes out and says it you will see a radically different game being played.

Re. "money is a non-issue we are not going to pay back one cent of that fraudulent libor rigged debt. once someone with balls comes out and says it you will see a radically different game being played." - Excellent & True. Thanx for your good comments on a good and important thread.

Speaking 'the truth' about 'money' is easier said than done as people are very wedded to the idea that it is something tangible and real, rather than the interest bearing debt instrument that it is. I append 5 links for consideration in due course :

oh i know buddy, i was an economics and finance major at one point in my younger days. as soon as learned the real role of the fed and fractional reserve lending i could not believe it. i tried to tell everyone i knew back then (mid 90's). they just couldn't wrap their heads around the fact that it was all a scam. still don't for the most part. you explain it to people and they just don't understand that money is based on debt and a debt based off a fraud is not a debt at all but a con job. add that to things we know now like libor and it simply beyond ridiculous that anyone is paying anything at this point. student debt is a fraud, mortgage debt is a fraud, car loan debt is a fraud, business loan debt is a fraud, credit card debt is a fraud. it's all a fraud because the rates where attached directly to libor and libor was manipulated fraudulently. i don't get why people don't understand this simple fact.

On the 'Theory Of Money', your comment is as succinct a summary as I've ever read on this forum, so thanx for that. We are all mired in the 'Mysterious, Mythical Money Matrix' and some (maybe 'most') people are extremely wedded to their monetary delusions and will reject any 'red pill' moment and as such, I append an interesting report :

"Americans exhibit a general disconnect between their attitudes toward economic inequality and their self-interest and public policy preferences, suggesting that even given increased awareness of the gap between ideal and actual wealth distributions, Americans may remain unlikely to advocate for policies that would narrow this gap."

Finally, in order to facilitate further awakening and to compliment my previous links :

Between the two of them, these films (3.5 hours & 2 hours, respectively) give an insight into 'The Theory Of Money' which no 'Economics Course ' will ever provide. People need to wise up and lose their fear if they are to shape and embrace the future.

I end by quoting J.K.Galbraith [1908-2006], who said : “The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it. The process by which banks create money is so simple the mind is repelled. With something so important a deeper mystery seems only decent.”

you are wrong the notion that money is the best motivator of people is a fallacy that capitalists propagate to try to defend their notion that greed is good. most major progress and innovation is not the result of someone attempting to get rich that is business that want riches. in the world of engineering and science where most major advances take place and not the imaginary one where people like mitt romney create jobs, people are motivated by achievement and making the world better.

You are full of shit. Money is the motivator. If not, why are there patents and patent enforcement?

On this very site, they taked about how some Canadian researcher may have found an anti cancer compound that would save oives. The first thing he did was re-patent it, so if it was a success he would get fat.

Actually i've seen this in practice, and it is becoming more popular. It's actually called giving your slaves more work at no cost, and they do use the word "responsibility" to make it seem like a privilege, but seriously, all they're doing is dumping more work on you.

The media and advertising bonanza blitz on Christmas and Black Friday is disgusting to me at a time when so many people in America and globally are suffering. I find it discomforting when others fall into that mindset - and feel "Hell the Ads say it's Christmas let's blow our kid's college education on mountains of toys and teach them that presents fall from the sky if they wish hard enough and behave right." It's a strange ritual - having fun and childhood hope in life is important but I wish we could all have a simpler mindset. It' seems life has become all about output, productivity, sacrifice, and fitting or filling a void created by our lack of time and connection to family or creativity, by buying things. To me time is a lost commodity, we've gone back to pre-industrial era when you can work 15 hours a day and still be broke and running on a treadmill. That's the saddest thing to me is that people are spending their whole lives behind a desk, or at a register, or behind a counter, without ever having anything to show for it except some spare and rushed fleeting moments. Life is so short, yet we give it all away, and enjoy none of the fruits of our labor. We just run that treadmill day after day hoping things will get better. People are working and going hungry at the same time. What a travesty. Even worse told to feel like losers because they can't make something different happen. There are so many lives going to waste. I look at them now; girls in the supermarket, waitresses, janitors, maids, and think this is it for you, your chances of getting out of this are slim. Like lottery slim. And these will be your days, serving others, worry frustration, fear. Never knowing when the rug will be pulled. And endless mountains of guilt and a sense that you aren't good enough, that somehow you caused it. (When in fact the system was rigged against you from the start, but you believe it because you see people who are doing alright.) That is life in America now for so many. So different from the message they received as kids getting all those toys feeling like if they just hope hard enough and behave luck will reign down on them. So opposite from the hard harsh reality that is America. I feel like if we could all stop and realize what is important, maybe it could change. If we'd stop listening to television and know what is right in our hearts. If we would stop letting monopolies dictate the value of and how much of our time here on this planet they will consume, and the cost for the lives we will live. I also fear that the well to do are sending their own children a double message when they teach their children to help the less fortunate when they don't ask them to sacrifice a bit of their lavish lifestyles but show them how the poor live and teach them that they can feel good about themselves by helping or donating and by demonstrating how lucky and fortunate and therefore special they themselves are. I think in some ways this is teaching them that they are separate and better because they get to go back to the warmth of their own wealth the warmth of all their stuff. Don't we all get to do that? Isn't there a better way truly being able to put oneself in another's shoes - true empathy is paying it forward and changing the system instead of just giving a pair of old stuff you don't use anymore? I believe that is at the heart of what this website is all about; changing the system that is the cause of it all- that is the pay it forward we're missing.